Are Your Landing Mechanics the Missing Link to Top Sports Performance?

So you’ve been working on your speed, power and explosiveness all season but have you actually been getting the most out of it? If you haven’t perfected your landing mechanics and ground contact on every stride, then you’re minimizing your playmaking capability and setting yourself up for potential injury.

What Does Landing Mechanics Mean?

Landing mechanics are what allows your body to set you up for the next move or bring your body to an effective stop. Whether it be a straight forward jump, lateral jump, a cut/juke move, or coming to a complete stop, how you land and the set up dictates the next move.

How Will It Improve Sports Performance?

Landing mechanics are one of the biggest factors that can immediately improve your performance. If you can efficiently absorb the forces your putting into the ground with every step, juke and landing then you can effectively explode out of that move like a loaded spring. This leads to a more efficient and effective juke, and stride. To put it simple you use less energy and make more plays.

How Can It Reduce My Injury Risk?

Landing is crucial to staying healthy and keeping yourself on the field or ice. Over time that landing issue, even if it’s minuscule, will lead to injury. For example, if your knees are collapsing inward every time you land, this creates excessive force on your knee joints. Over time, this may lead to problems such as an ACL, MCL or meniscus tear. If you’re effectively landing with all joints aligned, then you’re more likely to stay healthy and dominate the game.

Training Aspects’ personal trainers and sports performance coaches want you to accomplish your goals. You, as the personal training client, are a reflection of our personal training and group training methods! We are here to help you accomplish all of your personal training goals! Our main training focus are people looking to increase performance, lose weight , lose body fat and increase lean muscle. Whether you live in Cherry Hill, Haddonfield,Marlton, or any of the other surrounding areas we are here to help you Move, Look and feel as you’ve always desired…

Training Aspects’ personal trainers and sports performance coaches want you to accomplish your goals. You, as the personal training client, are a reflection of our personal training and group training methods! We are here to help you accomplish all of your personal training goals! Our main training focus are people looking to increase performance, lose weight , lose body fat and increase lean muscle. Whether you live in Cherry Hill, Haddonfield,Marlton, or any of the other surrounding areas we are here to help you Move, Look and feel as you’ve always desired…

Is Body Movement Training The Next Big Thing?

What is Body Movement Training?

Body movement training can be summed up to pretty much any type of body movement done efficiently: running, walking, jumping, bounding, rolling, cartwheels. These movements are already found in some fitness programs, but are they being done properly? And are they being worked on and perfected?

Hasn’t Body Movement Always Been a Thing?

It was a thing! Unfortunately, most people don’t move efficiently or often, leading to poor body mechanics and posture. This then leads to pain and potential injury. The vast majority of people are sitting behind desks for 8+ hours a day, followed by a few more hours in the car and on the couch to finish out the day. Our actions create habits and a habit of poor posture and inactivity doesn’t transfer well to healthy movement.

How Can I Make My Body Move More Efficiently?

Stop sitting so much, start there! For every hour you sit, make it a rule to at least get up and move around for 5 minutes. Do get a better idea of your body’s movement needs. Come in for a movement assessment. An assessment can pinpoint the body compensations and muscle imbalances developed over the years. These imbalances can come from various every day habits. You have a Desk job and aren’t very active. You play sports or have played sports and have developed imbalances because of the repetitive sporting movements. You’re an avid gym goer and have poor movement habits that lead to you doing the exercises incorrectly. Whatever it may be a movement assessment can help find the fix.

What is a Movement Assessment?

A movement assessment typically starts with a squat assessment. From this squat assessment every joint and muscle movement can be seen. Compensation patterns and muscle imbalances are determined. From there the most productive workout program can be put together to get your body moving more efficiently and in less pain! Now the true body movement training program begins!

Where Can I Get An Assessment?

More facilities are providing movement assessments than ever before, which is great for the future of body movement training, but not all assessments are created equal. Just make sure you do your homework on the place and find out if they do a movement assessment. If you live in the South Jersey area or want to complete an online movement assessment and suggestions on how to improve, we would be happy to help.

Training Aspects’ personal trainers and sports performance coaches want you to accomplish your goals. You, as the personal training client, are a reflection of our personal training and group training methods! We are here to help you accomplish all of your personal training goals! Our main training focus are people looking to increase performance, lose weight , lose body fat and increase lean muscle. Whether you live in Cherry Hill, Haddonfield,Marlton, or any of the other surrounding areas we are here to help you Move, Look and feel as you’ve always desired…

Training Aspects’ personal trainers and sports performance coaches want you to accomplish your goals. You, as the personal training client, are a reflection of our personal training and group training methods! We are here to help you accomplish all of your personal training goals! Our main training focus are people looking to increase performance, lose weight , lose body fat and increase lean muscle. Whether you live in Cherry Hill, Haddonfield,Marlton, or any of the other surrounding areas we are here to help you Move, Look and feel as you’ve always desired…

Training Aspects’ personal trainers and sports performance coaches want you to accomplish your goals. You, as the personal training client, are a reflection of our personal training and group training methods! We are here to help you accomplish all of your personal training goals! Our main training focus are people looking to increase performance, lose weight , lose body fat and increase lean muscle. Whether you live in Cherry Hill, Haddonfield,Marlton, or any of the other surrounding areas we are here to help you Move, Look and feel as you’ve always desired…

These articles will be a good guide to see if ankle mobility is an issue for you and how to improve it to get the most out of the performance exercises in this article. We are going to break down the top 5 sports performance exercises to start optimizing your new ankle mobility and really amp up your performance level!

Sports Performance Exercise #1: Single Leg Box Jumps

Single leg box jumps are a great way to build single leg stability and power. Single leg allows you to evenly develop stability and power in both legs without the compensations that may happen in a bi-lateral (both legs) box jumps. This will transfer over to sport more efficiently since your typically pushing and striding off of one leg.

Sports Performance Exercise #2: Weighted Deep Squats

Weighted deep squats are a great way to work on your ankle mobility under load or weight. This allows for your ankle to gain stability in the newly mobilized position. Increased mobility in your ankle is great but only if you can stay stable in those new ranges of motion. (Remember only add weight when you can perform the exercise properly without it.)

Sports Performance Exercise #3: Single Leg Lateral Bounds

This exercise takes the single leg box jump a step further and adds a lateral aspect to it. The ability to laterally transfer your weight over, explode through your hips and ankle, all while keeping a stable ankle for landing.

Sports Performance Exercise #4: Depth Jumps

Depth jumps are a challenging exercise but must be done correctly. Depth jumps train your ankle and the rest of your body to absorb the force of the ground and use the elastic energy created by your ankle to propel your body into the air for a powerful jump. This elastic energy can only be created by a mobile but stable ankle.

Sports Performance Exercise #5: Sprints

Your sprint can only be as powerful as your ankle mobility will allow. If your ankle is too stiff you won’t be able to properly absorb the force of each foot strike leading to wasted energy and less power. This will also translate to poor running mechanics and potential injury down the road.

Training Aspects’ personal trainers and sports performance coaches want you to accomplish your goals. You, as the personal training client, are a reflection of our personal training and group training methods! We are here to help you accomplish all of your personal training goals! Our main training focus are people looking to increase performance, lose weight , lose body fat and increase lean muscle. Whether you live in Cherry Hill, Haddonfield,Marlton, or any of the other surrounding areas we are here to help you Move, Look and feel as you’ve always desired…

Corrective Ways to Improve Ankle Mobility Part 2

Muscle Activations

What are Activations?

Typically there are many muscles in the body that will get under active or under used from muscle imbalances developed. This is where muscle activations come into play. Muscle activation exercises can increase the activity of that under used muscle.

How it Can Help

After you have already released, stretched and mobilized the affected area, activating the under used muscles can help bring back balance to the muscles and increase movement to the joints involved. Performance specific training can now be increased because muscles that were inactive and not part of the movement process, can now move efficiently and create the necessary power to move pain/wear and tear free.

Integrative Exercises

What is an Integrative Exercise?

An exercise that requires the body as whole to work together and activate all the necessary muscles to perform the movement efficiently.

How it Helps

This is the final piece to the puzzle. Integrative exercises help you develop stability, power and proper movement. Without integrating the movements, in most cases, doesn’t mean the process is complete. By integrating the movement back into daily life, the movement becomes a regular movement.

Training Aspects’ personal trainers and sports performance coaches want you to accomplish your goals. You, as the personal training client, are a reflection of our personal training and group training methods! We are here to help you accomplish all of your personal training goals! Our main training focus are people looking to increase performance, lose weight , lose body fat and increase lean muscle. Whether you live in Cherry Hill, Haddonfield,Marlton, or any of the other surrounding areas we are here to help you Move, Look and feel as you’ve always desired…

Corrective Ways to Improve Ankle Mobility Part 1

There are many techniques that may help improve your ankle mobility. Manual muscle release, self myofascial release, stretching, mobilizations, muscle activations and integrations to name a few. Let’s break down techniques and how to implement them to get the most effective results.

Myofascial Muscle Release

What’s a Release?

When we overuse certain muscles they can develop tight spots (trigger points). These trigger points can start to create pain. The goal of myofascial release is to apply pressure to these trigger points until they release.

Types

The two most popular types, manual and self releases. Manual releases involves another person, usually a physical therapist using their hands to release the muscle. Self releases involve a release tool like a foam roller or softball and the person performing the release for themselves.

How It Can Help

By applying the pressure to these trigger points it will start to loosen and allow the muscle to properly lengthen. Once the muscle is properly lengthened you can efficiently move on to the next steps like mobilizations and stretches.

Joint Mobilizations

What’s a Mobilization?

Many of our joints become stiff over time from not moving enough or having poor movement habits. Joint mobilizations increase mobility through isolated body movements that target specific joints. These mobilizations can only be performed optimally following muscle release. The releases will allow for proper length of the muscle leading to increased mobilization.

How It Can Help

Joint mobilizations help improve mobility of the joint, once that is achieved you can start improving movement patterns while exercising. It will also help you re-pattern these important joint movements back into your brain so they become habit. These habits will lead to less pain and injury.

Stretching

The regular outlook on Stretching?

Stretching feels great! However, being too flexible is just as bad as not being flexible. If the body is unable to move a certain way and you continue to push to push it past the limit. You may not realize that your body may have a restriction. Instead of the stretch being effective it’s actually stretching something totally different then planned.

When to Stretch?

Stretching is most beneficial after incorporating the above 2 techniques. Releases and mobilizations allow for the muscles to be properly lengthened. This is when stretching is most beneficial and can actually lengthen the muscle.

How It Can Help

Properly lengthening the muscles can put the joints and muscles into proper position allowing for strengthening exercises to be more beneficial and less likely to injure you!

Check back next week to get the continuation and second part to this article, it will include videos on how to improve.

Training Aspects’ personal trainers and sports performance coaches want you to accomplish your goals. You, as the personal training client, are a reflection of our personal training and group training methods! We are here to help you accomplish all of your personal training goals! Our main training focus are people looking to increase performance, lose weight , lose body fat and increase lean muscle. Whether you live in Cherry Hill, Haddonfield,Marlton, or any of the other surrounding areas we are here to help you Move, Look and feel as you’ve always desired…

Signs You Need to Improve Ankle Mobility

On a run, feeling great, out of no where there’s a weird pain in your ankle/knee. The usual response “oh it will work itself out,” just push through it . After the run calves are tight or maybe the dull pain comes back. You can barely walk the next day but you say “what a great run! I can really feel it.” Although it may feel like your making great progress (you know the all wise saying.. if you’re not sore you didnt do anything) these could actually be signs of something that is hindering your performance and adding up to a potential injury.

Sign of Ankle Dysfunction 1: Pain in Ankle, Knee, Hip

Pain is the most obvious sign that something is wrong. However, pain in your knee doesn’t necessarily mean the issue is your knee. Pain is a puzzle piece, the issue is the puzzle! Pain can make its way up to the knee and even the hip if the ankles are too stiff. Any time we walk, run, or jump the impact starts at the foot and ankle and then works its way up the chain. If the ankle lacks the mobility to absorb the shock of the impact it can send the shock up the chain to either the knee or hip. Leading to the knee or hip joint to overwork and compensate for the lack of mobility at the ankle leading to pain.

Sign of Ankle Dysfunction 2: Feet Turn Out

This is a big indicator that something is off. Even if you don’t feel pain, yet, with your feet turning out, it can be a sign of an injury brewing. Feet turning out is typically a sign of overactive calves and an under active anterior tibialis (shin area). If you have ever had shin splints this is one of the reasons why. This imbalance of the muscles of the lower leg causes the feet to not be able to dorsiflex properly. Lack of dorsiflexion doesn’t allow for proper force absorption when landing while running or jumping. This will also lead to the knees collapsing inward creating a lot of unwanted force at the knee joint. Repeat that motion over and over again and you have an injury waiting to happen.

Sign of Ankle Dysfunction 3: Your Calves are Always Tight

If your calves are sore or tight after eachworkout, there may be something wrong. This tightness or soreness can lead to the problems described above, starting with your feet turning out and then eventually pain and injury. So be careful when going by the “feeling the burn” or “no pain no gain” theories. Though you must challenge your muscles to progress, soreness is not always a sign of positive growth.

Stay tuned for next weeks article, tips on how to correct basic ankle dysfunction.

Training Aspects’ personal trainers and sports performance coaches want you to accomplish your goals. You, as the personal training client, are a reflection of our personal training and group training methods! We are here to help you accomplish all of your personal training goals! Our main training focus are people looking to increase performance, lose weight , lose body fat and increase lean muscle. Whether you live in Cherry Hill, Haddonfield,Marlton, or any of the other surrounding areas we are here to help you Move, Look and feel as you’ve always desired…

Top 3 Things to Make Your Sports Season a Success

Athletes want to get compete on the highest level, get stronger and dominant their sport, doing whatever it takes. Great mentality to have for the majority of the year. During the offseason, training can be at it’s highest intensity, your body will be able to recover properly in your down time. In season, that’s another story! Practices and games and the “on the go mentality” increases stress on the body. Active recovery and proper nutrition needs to be a focus during the season. Here are the top 3 ways to get you there.

Sports Success Tip 1: Adjust Your Training intensity

Decrease your training volume! During the offseason many athletes are working out 5-6 times a week. This is usually the right balance between getting in as much performance work as possible, while still allowing your body to recover. Once the season starts with increased practices and game days you’re going to need to scale back on the amount of training you’re doing. Some different ways to adjust your training load can be to lower the intensity, limit heavy weights, reduce number of training days and increase recovery methods. Focus on bodyweight mobility and strength.

Sports Success Tip 2: Increase Recovery Methods

Keeping your body fresh is most important! This is the time your body needs to be performing at its peak. The last thing you want is to go out on the ice or field and feel tight, sluggish, and under perform. Consistently going out to play with tight muscles and your body moving in-efficiently can lead to potential injures that will bring your season to a halt. No matter how talented you are, if you are on the sidelines, it doesn’t matter. Increasing muscle releasing, stretching and mobilizing combined with efficient body movement training can greatly improve performance and reduce injury risk.

Sports Season Success Tip 3: Pre and Post Game Nutrition

Athletes have a Go-Go-Go mindset, Plan your food and drink! Food and water is the same as fuel for a car. If you have a Ferrari you can’t put regular gas in it. As an athlete you are a Ferrari. Away game trips do not give you an excuse to eat poorly. So make sure you make eating and hydration a priority. Carbs are your friend, give the body easy energy for the athlete. An in game electrolyte drink such Accelerade or bodyarmour can be beneficial in aiding endurance sports lasting over 1 hour 1/2 – 2 hours. Plenty of water, about 12-16 fl.oz per hour pre game. During the game have a mix between water an electrolyte carb drink. Post game drink 12-16 Fl.oz per pound lost, as well as, a protein, sugar, electrolyte combination to replenish lost fluids and nutrients and begin the rebuilding process. Then a meal an hour later.

Incorporate these 3 things into your in-season training and see a huge spike in your performance.

Training Aspects’ personal trainers and sports performance coaches want you to accomplish your goals. You, as the personal training client, are a reflection of our personal training and group training methods! We are here to help you accomplish all of your personal training goals! Our main training focus are people looking to increase performance, lose weight , lose body fat and increase lean muscle. Whether you live in Cherry Hill, Haddonfield,Marlton, or any of the other surrounding areas we are here to help you Move, Look and feel as you’ve always desired…

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910 Haddonfield-Berlin rd.

Voorhees, NJ 08043

http://trainingaspects.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/TA-Logo-White-Background-larger-min-300x120.png00Alex Garashchenkohttp://trainingaspects.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/TA-Logo-White-Background-larger-min-300x120.pngAlex Garashchenko2017-09-22 11:08:302017-12-21 09:02:593 Things to Make Your Sports Season a Success